Making Sense of “Family Separation” of Asylum Seekers

As have millions of Americans, I have felt deeply and instinctually that the Trump Administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policy, that has resulted in separating thousands of children of all ages from their parents, is immoral, inhumane, and probably a violation of the law.

In an attempt to clarify my own thoughts I have been doing a good deal of reading on the subject. I thought that many of you might be interested in following the same path as I, so I wrote less of a think piece and more a pathfinder on the subject. You might try reading the same material as I and see if you view things differently than I at the end.

“I started with well-researched overviews of the subject by the Congressional Research Service and the National Immigration Forum. The former is a longer-term overview starting with Obama-era policies and was written before the Trump Administration began the current outrage, and the later has a somewhat ‘left’ policy bias. Both left me with a better understanding of how we arrived where we are.

Key to why children were being separated is the Flores case and settlement, which caps the length of time children can be held in immigration detention. It was this settlement that is the factual basis for Trump’s lie that it was “democrat laws” that forced the family separations.

Personally, I am surprised there have not been stronger calls from Dems for mass resignations from the Trump Administration of anyone who even knew about this ‘policy’ initiative, starting with the odious little man likely behind it, Stephen Miller. It is so obviously wrong and evil in its effect that I have a hard time believing that no one foresaw the revulsion that has gripped the American people and the international community upon learning of it. Anyone involved should have foreseen that this would damage America’s moral standing in the world.

This really boils down to a dirty and shameful kidnapping and extortion racket run by the U.S. government. Some bright bulb (probably Miller) thought, “why don’t we try holding asylum seekers children hostage against their ‘voluntary’ departure and see how that works out?”

Instead of taking proactive measures in the Courts to modify the Flores settlement to allow children to stay with their families after 20 days, the Trump Administration bulled forward foolishly, recklessly, and incompetently (which really has become their calling card) to scatter innocent children around the country with no planning or tracking to ensure they could be reunited.

Even that much such foresight simply begs the question of the morality, legality and due process implications of indefinite family detentions, which our nation will now explore willy-nilly. The Trump Administration will get its ass handed to it ignominiously in a dozen courts, and then proclaim a victory in the war on immigration to his base once the whole improvised cluster-fuck explodes. In the mean-time, our moral standing in the world will suffer for Trump’s vanity and incompetent posturing. Perhaps this crisis will give us pause regarding the effect of our carceral system on American families, though that may just be wishful thinking on my part.

We have one answer to the question often heard before the 2016 election: “What’s the worst that could happen if Trump were President?”

You suggest that Trump should go to the courts to get an extension of the Flores 20 day limit to detection but those detentions are in detection centers, which are more like jails than presumably housing on military bases would be. I have lived on military bases. I think that they would be a lot better than detention centers.

I think you need to rethink this one or at least wait for more info on the military accommodations.

Given that few people released on their promise to return for a hearing do so, what alternative is there to detention while awaiting adjudication? How about not showing up results in an automatic denial and deportation without appeal?

That’s simply not true. Bail, monitoring and social workers are very effective means of insuring reporting for proceedings. Give me a non-biased source for this assertion. Don’t include non-reports due to self- deportations. And by the way, we are talking about asylum seekers, not just undocumented entries.

I do not think that military personnel will be involved due to the posse comitatus law. I think that border patrol officers will be running these facilities or maybe federal detention officers. Just became it is on a military base does not mean the military will be involved. Just speculation.

I was following along until I stumbled on this sentence: “One of the more dire being the moral injury to the personnel of the armed forces ordered to administer concentration camps.” That’s the kind of sentence that scares reasonable people away. Are you really equating confinement with one’s family on a military base with being inside a concentration camp?

John, if you THAT was ad hominem, you must have only dealt with nicest criminals when you were a cop.

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